Reinvigorated, Taylor Momsen Is Ready for Her Next Chapter

Taylor Momsen has a cold when we chat over the phone on a recent Friday night. She’s standing on a street in Prague, Czech Republic, awaiting sound check for her band’s headlining tour. In between sneezes, Momsen—front woman of post-grunge rock band The Pretty Reckless, which is also comprised of lead guitarist and backing vocalist Ben Phillips, drummer Jamie Perkins, and bassist Mark Damon—is eager and affable as she talks about the group’s recently released album Other Worlds. With a warm, friendly tone, it’s clear she’s excited to discuss her band’s evolution, as well as her own.

The collection of eleven songs sees Momsen embrace a different side of her vocals, most evident on “The Keeper” and the reimagined version of “25,” and gives fans a “behind the scenes look” at the band’s musical influences, she tells me. Making this collection was a no-brainer for Momsen as “fans have been asking for an official format of acoustic material for years.” When she and the band recorded these songs, it clicked: “I went ‘Oh, this is the other side of us. It’s a bit more intimate and stripped back, but still very Pretty Reckless.” The record strikes a different tone than the group’s powerful 2021 album Death by Rock N’ Roll, which recounts Momsen’s personal path to shore from the ocean of grief that threatened to drown her and her bandmates.

Death By Rock N’ Roll “let the floodgates open,” Momsen recalls, as she became pessimistic and depressed after a multitude of tragedies: the death of Chris Cornell of Soundgarden in 2017, the passing of Perkins’ brother in a car accident, and the death of longtime producer and close friend Kato Khandwala, whose passing was a “nail in the coffin” for Momsen, on top of COVID shutting down the live music industry. The losses led her to turn to substance abuse to numb the pain, as Momsen told ELLE.com back in March. The Other Worlds EP, however, lets the light in and sees the band hopeful about the future.

“Being able to get out on the road again and play all of this material and complete the full circle of what it means to play music and make a new record has been very invigorating,” Momsen said in an earlier Zoom interview. “It’s breathing life into the band and myself and I feel like we’re in a very positive place, which is nice to be able to say as we started in a very negative one.”

Born in St. Louis, MO, Momsen was first known for her acting—especially for roles like Cindy Lou Who in the film How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Jenny Humphrey on the CW teen series Gossip Girl—while she worked on music behind the scenes, but she retired from the screen at 16. She was only 15 years old when The Pretty Reckless formed in 2009; the band’s debut album Light Me Up was released in 2010 via Interscope Records and spawned the successful single “Make Me Wanna Die.” Their sophomore record Going To Hell landed at number five on the Billboard 200, and their third, 2017’s Who You Selling For, saw the band open for Soundgarden and generate the single “Take Me Down.” Their February 2021 record, Death By Rock N’ Roll, features dark themes and paints the arc of Momsen’s grief. The band’s most recent effort, Other Worlds, released on Nov. 4, is a collection of songs that give insight into the influences that helped her through dark times.

Momsen sat down with ELLE.com to chat about her band’s new EP, being a musician first, and how she released herself from the grips of grief through music.

This album contains covers and acoustic versions of The Pretty Reckless’ tracks. What made you want to create this collection of songs?

Other Worlds fell into our lap. It wasn’t planned. I don’t really call it a record. It’s a collection of songs. During the lockdown, we couldn’t tour. We were promoting Death By Rock N’ Roll. I was doing lots of Zoom interviews and everything, which is all good and fine, but doing that side of a record release and not getting to play feels very incomplete. It felt very strange, so I was getting very antsy to make music. Because I became so bored, I started making music at home and recording acoustic versions of our songs, working with some of my friends who are also artists and doing remote collaborations. By the end of lockdown, I looked at all the stuff I made and went, “This is all really good. I’m really proud of all of this stuff.” And it all has a vibe and a cohesive feel to it. I was like, “We should put this out in some sort of official format so that people can listen to it because I find it very pleasurable to listen to.” Every time we make music that I’m proud of, I want to share it with the world.

Other Worlds sees you and the band figuring out “an alternative way to release music.” Tell me about that process.

When we made the decision to put it out, it was interesting to me because everything is so stripped back and acoustic, it shows where the songs started, which is an inside look into how we make music. Everything I write starts off with some acoustic guitar or piano and then the production is added later. It shows how the song was born and it is in its infancy, which I always find very interesting with artists that I love.

One of my favorite things is to listen to demos, the originals, where the song started. “Quicksand” is a perfect example because my rendition of that on Other Worlds is based off of David Bowie’s demo of the song, which is something I grew up listening to. My dad was a massive David Bowie fan and he used to make me compilations and he somehow came across this bootleg version where it’s just Bowie and an acoustic guitar and the lyrics hit differently. You can hear the song in its infancy without all the pop production that made it the massive hit that it is. You can really hear the core of what he was saying. When you listen to a song in its stripped back form like that, I think you can really connect with it on a whole different level. That’s always been intriguing to me as an artist and a fan, so getting to share that side of ourselves with our fans was an interesting idea for me.

How have you and the band processed the grief that surrounded the last album?

I don’t think that that heaviness and that grief and that loss ever goes away and that’s something I’m learning. I’m never not going to miss Kato. I miss him every minute of every day. But it’s something that has become a part of me now and that wound isn’t so fresh, like I’m not bleeding all over the floor with it anymore. It’s just a part of my body now. Getting to get out into the world again and getting to play these songs live and sharing the music in a real way with fans across the world, it’s cathartic, exciting, and breathes new life into the material.

Playing live is like a drug you can’t get anywhere else and I think that by not playing live for so long, I was going through withdrawal and I didn’t even realize it. Being able to get out on the road again and play all of this material and complete the full circle of what it means to play music and make a new record has been very invigorating. It’s breathing life into the band and myself and I feel like we’re in a very positive place, which is nice to be able to say as we started in a very negative one.

How has moving past grief affected your music and performance?

Songs take on different forms as time goes on. When you write the song, you’re very much living inside of those emotions because it’s very fresh. By the time the album comes out and you’re touring, the live versions take on this new emotion where it’s suddenly not so personal. That still exists, but it’s about sharing music and about creating a symbiotic relationship with the audience, the fans, and that’s a really beautiful thing. They can take on this new excitement and life that you’re sharing and everyone’s feeling that energy together and then I’m not so stuck inside my own head.

Music has this healing quality to it. I feel so fortunate that I found that in music at such a young age. I found that in my writing I can express myself fully and understand myself and work through whatever I need to work through personally through music and help others with feelings that they may not be able to express in another outlet along the way by sharing that.

You’ve said that you see yourself as a musician first, although arguably more people know you for your acting. Why is that?

Personally, I don’t really consider myself an actress. I wouldn’t call it a passion. It was just something I always did, I kind of didn’t know anything differently and music was something I was always doing, just behind the scenes. I was always writing songs and playing instruments and singing and it just took. I had to get to a certain age and growing pains came with that because it’s all me. There’s no script. There’s no director. There’s no outside forces. It’s all me.

I had to find the right people. I really wanted everything to be organic. I don’t hire musicians; it’s a real band and that takes time, a whole lot of work, and a whole lot of luck to write a record’s worth of material that people actually wanted to hear (you write a lot of bad songs before you write good ones). All of those things had to fall into place and when they finally did, it was just complete and utter love.

Once it was the four of us, it was us against the world and that’s where I put everything into. I was like, “I don’t want to do these other jobs now. I just want to do this all the time.” So that’s when I left everything else behind and it was the best decision I ever made.

Where are you regarding acting now?

It’s a wonderful career, a wonderful job. I think when I was younger, a lot of my quotes got misinterpreted—I was very drastic with my language [laughs]. It was always fine. It was never something I truly loved. That’s not to say that I’ll never play a character in a movie or something, but it’s not something I’m pursuing at all. Acting is something I did and maybe I’ll do it again. Who knows? But music will forever be a constant. It’s not going anywhere.

How do you think your band’s image has changed over the years?

I think that the biggest thing is that we’re just older and we’ve been around the block a few times now. And I’ve certainly grown since the beginning of this band physically, mentally, eye makeup-wise. I still like a good smokey eye, just a little less extreme. [Laughs] I’ve taken it down everyday.

What are you most looking forward to on this tour?

We’re having so much fun and when I say that—I said that about the last album and I’ll say this about this tour—it feels like a rebirth of The Pretty Reckless. We feel like a new band. During lockdown, there was nothing to do, we couldn’t tour, so we spent over six months in a rehearsal space just playing for no foreseeable outcome other than to play music and have fun. I think that by doing that, that really reinforced our bond—we always had a really tight bond—and created this new dynamic between us that is unlike anything else and is really special. It makes these shows extraordinarily fun, especially now that we have four records to draw material from, so we’re in a place where we can change it every night based on how we’re feeling. That’s also created a new dynamic for the live shows that maybe wasn’t as prevalent before. It creates something fun and exciting to watch. It makes touring exciting and not monotonous because every show is its own world—part of that is the audience and part of that is us. It’s fuckin’ great.

One of the coolest things that was important to me when making the record and was a part of my healing process was keeping Kato’s memory alive and making sure that even though he’s no longer here—if your memory doesn’t die, you don’t die. That’s how I see it. We get to walk on stage every night to the sound of Kato’s footsteps. So he’s no longer physically here, but he’s there with us every night and it’s very haunting and powerful to hear fans across the world scream “Death By Rock N’ Roll” back at you. I feel like he’d be really proud that I’ve honored his memory in a meaningful way.

It feels like the first record again. I feel like bands that are around for a long time playing with the same musicians for years can fall into a rut and lose that original flame. With this album and this cycle, we’ve regained that original flame. I almost feel 16 again. We all have a new fire to us that’s burning quite bright.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.